Your link is to Factcheckdotorg. While you ridiculed my link, you put up a link to a partisan political web-site, funded by the Frank Annenburg foundation (whose former board members include Bill Ayers and Barack Obama). I think its interesting, to say the least, that they call themselves 'factcheck'.
I'm not so sure why this is so hard to understand. Congress (usually GOP btw) borrowed from the SS trust fund in the 90's, in order to claim a balanced budget. Clinton stole their thunder and claimed the surplus as his own. Al Gore, a generally shallow man, had a moment of conscience and clarity and made the 'lockbox' a campaign point. It went over like a lead balloon, because most people couldn't understand it...if both parties, and the media are saying we had a surplus, we have a surplus didn't we? Al's campaign to protect social security didn't help him one bit.
But the IOU's are still sitting there in the trust fund...reminds me of a scene near the end of Dumb and Dumber. But please, if somebody would like to enlighten me, and show me that the general fund did not borrow from the trust fund, I'd love to hear it.
For those interested, here is a CBO report on the transfers:
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3982&type=0
Here is a link from a University of Florida guy explaining the transfers in layman's terms (although it might not pass your 'blog' standard):
http://grove.ufl.edu/~leo/fed_trust_funds.html
I knew mentioning Beck would get a reaction. I actually seldom listen to him, because he is somewhat depressing. I remember around 3-4 years ago, he kept harping on an 'economic tsunami' that would hit. I tuned him out, since that wasn't possible....
...the darnest thing about Beck...he has a track record of being right, no matter how annoying he can be.